I found Bobby lying in a deck chair on the verandah awaiting my return. He jumped up as I appeared and came forward across the lawn to meet me.
"Welcome home, my lad," he observed. "I was just beginning to be afraid they'd clapped you into the local dungeon."
"Anything fresh happened while I've been away?" I asked.
He shook his head. "It's been positively dull. I've spent the time sitting in the sunshine, brooding over your family affairs."
He led the way back to the verandah, and, taking the chair alongside of him, I plunged straight away into an account of my experiences at Pen Mill.
"I hope I handled the thing right, Bobby," I concluded. "The doctor was evidently inclined to think it might be a case of murder, and to have set myself up against him would have been simply asking for trouble. If he felt the least suspicious about me, he'd probably have wired bang off to the Head Constable. As it is, thanks to that fool of a Sergeant, we ought to have at least twenty-four hours' breathing space."
Bobby patted me approvingly on the back. "You displayed a surprising amount of tact," he remarked. "It looks to me as if falling in love had considerably sharpened your wits."
"I think it was falling into the dock," I retorted. "Anyhow, the question is, What are we going to do now? According to the Sergeant the inquest will probably be on Friday morning, and unless we make pretty good use of our time——"
"We shall," interrupted Bobby. "I've been chewing the whole thing over while you were ashore, and I've come to one or two highly intelligent conclusions." He leaned across the arm of his chair, and knocked out his pipe against the side railing. "In the first place," he continued, in a rather more serious tone, "we've got to face the fact that Bascomb's death puts us into a devilish awkward position. I'm not very strong on law, but there's such a thing as being an accessory to murder. If we suspect Manning and de Roda we've no right to keep the fact from the police merely because we don't want to get your girl into trouble."
"But it was your advice," I protested. "Besides, I don't believe that de Roda had anything to do with it. I'm almost certain that Bascomb went over to the barge with some mad idea of revenging himself upon Manning. He probably found Craill there as well, and between the pair of them——"